U.S. Bill Would Lift Delta Fish Protections

Robert B. Gunnison, Greg Lucas, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau

Published
4:00 am PDT, Thursday, June 22, 1995

A key California Republican introduced legislation in Congress yesterday that would overturn much of a 3-year-old law designed to protect salmon and steelhead in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, provoking a furious reaction from environmentalists.

Central Valley growers who rely on irrigation water would be the big winners under the legislation unveiled by Representative John Doolittle of Rocklin, chairman of the Water and Power Resources Subcommittee.

In Washington, Doolittle said: "The law we have in place today has proven to be unworkable. All that really has occurred since the law went into effect three years ago is that the Central Valley Project contractors have been encumbered with new restrictions, substantial new costs and enormous uncertainties, all without any material environmental improvement."

"This bill is the legislative equivalent of a drive-by shooting," said Barry Nelson, executive director of Save San Francisco Bay Association. "Gutting the CVPIA would sentence California to another era of water wars and uncertain supplies."

In October 1991, then-President Bush signed the bill that roughly tripled the amount of federal water in California devoted to fish and wildlife and let cities buy water directly from growers willing to sell.

The legislation was bitterly opposed by Governor Wilson and growers, who saw a chance to reverse the Central Valley Improvement Act when Republicans moved into the majority in the November elections.

Specifically, the new law set aside 800,000 acre-feet of water for summer flows in the delta, designed to double the population of salmon and steelhead that swim from their birthplaces in the interior rivers to the ocean and then return.

Thousands of the young fish die in the giant pumps in the delta that lift water into state and federal aqueducts to the Central Valley farms. The extra water was supposed to give extra protection to those young fish.

Doolittle's bill would allow the 800,000 acre-feet of water to be pumped rather than flow into San Francisco Bay. It would also give control of fish restoration to the state.

Because of the enormous rain and snowfall this winter, farmers will receive 100 percent of their legal allocation for the first time since the new law took effect. In years of average rainfall, they are not expected to receive their full entitlement, however.

"That is what we are calling punitive. Our bill meets the obligations of the environment while balancing the outstanding contract obligations," said Bill Mueller, a spokesman for Doolittle.

Mueller also said the bill would end the law's new pricing scheme, which is designed to charge farmers for a portion of the full cost of delivering water.

"Tiered pricing is viewed as a disincentive in years such as this because it actually discourages people from recharging their underground water table," he said. "If you use more water it would cost you more."

The bill would maintain the current "restoration fund," which now contains $60 million, but allow more of the the money to use for improvements to the Central Valley Project, rather than on environmental mitigation.